Home > Storage > PowerMax and VMAX > Mainframe > Dell PowerMax: Data Protector for z Systems (zDP) Essentials > Overview
Much of the focus on data protection in the last twenty years has been on recovery from loss of a data center due to unplanned outages or disasters. The emphasis has been on providing copies of data at alternate sites and on ensuring that data integrity of the copies is preserved. “Availability with data integrity” has been the goal.
In recent years, the focus of business continuity planning has expanded, beyond recovery from unplanned outages, to include a focus on recovery from widespread data corruption. Data corruption risk has taken on new and more dangerous forms beyond simple processing errors that introduce errant data. Data corruption risk now includes the willful hacking and destruction of data. As a result, the responsibility of CIOs has expanded beyond providing for rapid recovery from data center loss to ensuring “rapid recovery from loss of data integrity”.
Data Protector for z Systems (zDP) is designed to address the problem of large-scale recovery from logical data corruption. zDP is a Dell Technologies z/OS-based application that uses TimeFinder SnapVX snapshots to enable rapid recovery from logical data corruption. zDP achieves this by providing multiple, frequent, and consistent point-in-time copies of data in an automated fashion across multiple volumes from which an application-level recovery can be conducted. By providing easy access to multiple different point-in-time copies of data (with a granularity of minutes), precise remediation of logical data corruption can be performed using storage or application-based recovery procedures. zDP provides the following benefits:
Prior to zDP, the only way to recover from logical data corruption was an offline copy, consisting of either a Business Continuance Volume (BCV), sometimes known as a “gold copy”, or a backup made to offline physical or virtual tape. Even in the best data centers practicing the latest data protection procedures, often only one offline copy of the “state of the business” was being made per day. Considering that 288 snapshots can be taken in a 24-hour period (at 5-minute intervals) with zDP as compared to a single BCV or offline tape backup, zDP gives you up to 288x the granularity to recover from a situation that otherwise could have been detrimental or fatal to your business.
zDP enables rapid recovery from cyber-attacks, malware, sabotage, and human error. The key question is, have you done all you can to prepare for data loss, for data held to ransom, or data corruption?